Let’s go watch.”
The children of Lieutenant Schmidt, now fast friends, stepped out from behind the corner and approached the window of the chairman’s office.
The chairman was sitting behind the grimy, unwashed glass.
He was writing quickly.
Like all those engaged in writing, he looked grieved.
Suddenly he raised his head.
The door swung open, and in came Panikovsky.
Holding his hat against his greasy jacket, he stopped in front of the desk and moved his thick lips for a long time.
Then the chairman jumped in his chair and opened his mouth wide.
The brothers heard a long howl.
Whispering “Fall back, now!” Ostap dragged Balaganov away.
They ran to the boulevard and hid behind a tree.
“Take your hats off,” said Ostap, “bare your heads.
The body is about to be escorted outside.”
He was right.
The thunderous cadences of the chairman’s voice could still be heard when two large men appeared in the doorway of the city hall.
They were carrying Panikovsky.
One held his arms, the other his legs.
“The remains,” narrated Ostap, “were carried out by the friends and family of the deceased.”
The men dragged the third, foolish offspring of Lieutenant Schmidt out to the porch and started slowly swinging him back and forth.
Panikovsky silently gazed into the blue sky with resignation.
“After a brief funeral service . . .” continued Ostap.
At this very moment the men, having given Panikovsky’s body sufficient momentum, threw him out onto the street.
“. . . the ashes were interred,” concluded Bender.
Panikovsky plopped on the ground like a toad.
He quickly got up and, leaning to one side even more than before, ran down the Boulevard of Prodigies with amazing speed.
“All right,” said Ostap, “now tell me how the bastard broke the pact and what that pact was all about.”
CHAPTER 2 THE THIRTY SONS OF LIEUTENANT SCHMIDT
The eventful morning came to an end.
Without discussion, Bender and Balaganov walked briskly away from the city hall.
A long, dark-blue steel rail was being carried down the main street in an open peasant cart.
The street was ringing and singing, as if the peasant in rough fisherman’s clothes was carrying a giant tuning fork rather than a rail.
The sun beat down on the display in the window of the visual aids store, where two skeletons stood in a friendly embrace amidst globes, skulls, and the cheerfully painted cardboard liver of an alcoholic.
The modest window of the sign shop was largely filled with glazed metal signs that read CLOSED FOR LUNCH, LUNCH BREAK 2-3 P.M., CLOSED FOR LUNCH BREAK, CLOSED, STORE CLOSED, and, finally, a massive black board with CLOSED FOR INVENTORY in gold lettering.
Apparently these blunt statements were particularly popular in the town of Arbatov.
All other eventualities were covered with a single blue sign, ATTENDANT ON DUTY.
Farther down, three stores—selling wind instruments, mandolins, and bass balalaikas—stood together.
Brass trumpets shone immodestly from display stands covered with red fabric.
The tuba was particularly impressive.
It looked so powerful, and lay coiled in the sun so lazily, that one couldn’t help thinking its proper place was not in a window but in a big city zoo, somewhere between the elephant and the boa constrictor. On their days off, parents would bring their kids to see it and would say:
“Look, honey, this is the tuba section.
The tuba is now asleep.
But when it wakes up, it will definitely start trumpeting.”
And the kids would stare at the remarkable instrument with their large wondrous eyes.
Under different circumstances, Ostap Bender would have noticed the freshly hewn, log cabin-sized balalaikas, the phonograph records warping in the heat, and the children’s marching band drums, whose dashing color schemes suggested that providence is always on the side of the big battalions. This time, however, he was preoccupied with something else.
He was hungry.
“I gather you’re on the verge of a financial abyss?” he asked Balaganov.
“You mean money?” replied Shura. “I haven’t had any for a week now.”
“In that case, I’d worry about your future, young man,” said Ostap didactically. “The financial abyss is the deepest of them all, and you can be falling into it all your life.
Oh well, cheer up.